Failure is acceptable

For the guy who founded SurfControl (which recently sold for just over $400million) it may seem surprising that Steve Purdham should say ‘Failure is acceptable’ in his ‘what I wished I knew’ article.

As it happens I would go a step further and say not only is failure acceptable but it should be seen as inevitable.

For early stage companies to be genuinely innovative, break in to new markets, beat off the competition and make great returns for investors they have to take risks and ‘swing for home runs’. The reality is that if you are running an early stage company you are taking numerous (managed) risks every day and are not always going to be successful. You can fail to raise all the money you hoped to, fail to get the technology to work just the way you wanted, fail to get a break with a significant customer and so on.

Failure at some scale will constantly plague early stage businesses. Investors often try and put pressure on companies to avoid failure but with it often goes the entrepreneurial, risk taking spirit that is essential to an early stage company’s success. I don’t celebrate failure but it should be seen it as inevitable in a risk taking business.

Comments

[Mik]

Fear of failure is one of the great stifling influences holding us back, but whilst it may be inevitable it is not compulsory. The real problem is of course the one strike and your out mentality which will be underlined in any coming credit cruch. That said the way forward has to be innovation, finding new ways to move ahead, anyone who thinks otherwise should try and buy a BSA or Ariel, once kings of the motorcycle world brought to nothing by stagnation, the opposite of innovation.

MG

[Roland Harwood]

Surely there is no failure, only learning.